Libraries of The Future: Well Defended Citadels Against The Bloodthirsty Dead

When we here at Herndon read the latest assignment about prognosticating the future of libraries and "guaging our crystal balls", we knew exactly who to go to...

...She floats above the child-size shelves of the Easy Section, her legs folded into a full-lotus, the wisdom of a thousand Tibetan mystics flowing through her Chakras. Children swarm around her in strange fractal patterns and sing blissful songs in the ancient tongues of lost Atlantians...

...Her name is Duyen, Goddess of the Section Nobody Wants to Work, and she actually owns a crystal ball.

Of course Duyen would never let us borrow the crystal ball. She'd say something like, "It is way to powerful, you'll put somebody's eye out and ruin your appetite. Dan, stop hitting Michelle!"

But like all children, we snuck into Duyen's locker and took it anyway. On a dark and stormy night we all conveined in Meeting Room #1, plugged that sucker in, and proceeded to rip asunder the veil of time.

Jessica made brownies, Sharon popped pop-corn, and Dan brought yams that he grew with his own bathtub/hydroponic chamber conversion kit. When the smoky glass inside that crystal sphere turned the color of blood and the tortured screams of humanity could be heard in Dolby stereo, we knew we were in for something real horror-show, my little droogies.

So without any further adieu, let us reveal to you the things which are to come and get all Nostradamus on this bad boy:

- In the year 2112, a man discovers an ancient guitar and plays music forbidden by the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx...sorry, that's actually a Rush album...ok, here's the right one...

...In the year 2112, a dark cult of neo-neo conservative necromancers raise George W. Bush from the dead and, by the use of black magic and some robo-calling, install him as Emperor of the World.

Now, regardless of your politics or what you personally think about the guy, you have to admit the man attracts disasters like unsecured trash cans attract raccoons. Unfortunately, with Zombie Bush, this only gets worse. Here are some of the things your great-grandchildren can look forward to:

-Giant space locusts invade earth, destroying all food crops.

-The stock market drops a trillion points in one day and Wall Street literally implodes like the house in Poltergeist.

-Dick Cheney is resurrected as some kind of huge robot-vampire thingy who feeds on crude oil and human souls.

-Parachute pants come back in style.

But, like any apocalypse worth its salt, things only really hit their stride when masses of human corpses dig their way out the grave with an insatiable and unstoppable hunger for human flesh. Of course, you may be one of those people who thinks, "Hey look, it's a bunch of shambling, reanimated cadavers.
Boy, I hope they break into a funky dance number like in Thriller."

No, zombies are not here for your entertainment. They simply want to eviscerate you and slurp up your intestines like Chinese noodles.

But, my friends, there is hope. Much like Irish monastaries preserved the world's knowledge during the Dark Ages, libraries of the future will serve a similar function, and given the hellish circumstances, you won't get in trouble for sleeping there. For those lucky enough to be trapped inside one once the Big Bad comes to town, here are some great things the libraries will provide during the End Times:

Food: The great thing about libraries is there is always something in the fridge, be it a moldy burrito or left over Starfruit/Mango juice boxes from the kid's luau program the Saturday before. If doled out responsibly, library fridge food can last a while. After it is gone, however, the staff and patrons will be forced to resort to cannibalism.

Information/Knowledge: By 2112 all library media, be it print, audio, video etc., will be digitized into glowing blue "info-spheres". This will allow for information to be downloaded straight into the cerebral cortex via one of those vintage 1960's hair-drying chairs:

Not only can you download the entire works of Shakespeare in 9.7 seconds, but your perm will look fantastic!!!

Defense: Every branch of the library will be outfitted with GAU-8 Avenger rotrary cannons, vats full of boiling oil, and a pirrahna filled moat complete with working drawbridge.

There will be garlic-tipped crossbow arrows in case of vampire attack; armor-piercing silver bullets should a branch encounter werewolves in flack jackets; buckets of dry ice if they need to freeze the Blob or any other gelatinous monster; and boxes of poisoned Lucky Charms were they to be infiltrated by an evil leprechaun.

Now, we would like to say that we know how this all turns out, but we used up all the bars on Duyen's crystall ball and she done hid the charger real good.

So the big questions remain:

Will the library staff of the future be forced to eat each other?; and if so, will this undermine the F.I.S.H. philosophy?

Can Zombie Bush be defeated by an unassuming young wizard with a lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead and will a glaring engineering flaw in Robot Cheney be found in the secret plans encrypted in the hard-drive of an adorable R2 Unit?

And lastly, the most enduring question of all:

Can the living dead ever truly be taught to Moonwalk?

Michelle Romeo: Renaissance Ninja - Just Ask Google -

Everyone knows that, in a pinch, our shelver Michelle Romeo could run the Herndon Library all by herself. I mean she knows the branch like the back of her hand, even the location of a hidden door which opens to a Prohibition era speak-easy completely stocked with gangsters, flappers, and bathtub gin.

Michelle was once described as the "Yoda of shelvers", except that she is taller than Yoda, doesn't talk backwards, doesn't live in a swamp, and has never been green save for the time she dressed up as the Jolly Green Giant's sidekick, Sprout, for Halloween. No, Michelle is more like Tinker Bell with a Yoda-like wisdom. If in fact Tinker Bell were a deadly ninja with a patented death-stare that could melt someone's eyeballs out of their sockets, the analogy would be perfect.

Just in the physical act of shelving alone, no one even comes close. She can shelve with her hands and feet simultaneously, as well as with ghostly tendrils emanating from her solar plexus.

If you combine all this with the fact that she is working on her Masters Degree in speech therapy, teaches autistic children, and has like 9 other jobs, you get the picture of a highly motivated, incredibly intelligent, extremely competent individual who makes the rest of us look like blank-eyed slackers, wasting away on a filthy vinyl couch in front of reruns of Mork & Mindy.

Yet, this was stuff we here at Herndon already knew. So we took some time, as outlined by the assignment and Googled her name in hopes of finding out some real good dirt on her. Unfortunately there was nothing we could blackmail her with, but the results were still quite startling.

Here are just some of the groovy things the great oracle Google revealed about Ms. Romeo:

-Michelle Romeo worked as a production assistant on the TV Show Escape From Mars.

*One TV Critic said this show was much like "Escape From New York" only that it was terrible and watching it could quite possibly give you eye cancer.

-Michelle Romeo is the founder and artistic director of the Rocky Mountain Theatre For Kids.

*That's in Boulder, Colorado people!!! She can't possible commute by any conventional means. This can only mean one thing...teleportation. Man, why does she get all the good superpowers?

-Michelle Romeo is an 86 year old woman who was cured by a debilitating case of gout by an image of the Virgin Mary which miraculously appeared on top of a pop- tart.

*Truly inspirational. And seriously that pop-tart Mary must have also cured her of age, because the girl doesn't look a day over 18.

So let's recap what we've learned. Michelle Romeo: maverick, outsider, moose-killer. Vote her into office come this November and she will shake up Congress good, mostly by decapitating anyone who doesn't agree with her.

FIN